Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. James Sandefur received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Tulane University and is currently a Professor and Chair of the Mathematics Department at Georgetown University. He received the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2006, and the MAA Polya Award for Expository Writing, 2006.

His interests are in mathematics education at secondary and college levels, differential equations, and discrete dynamical systems. He has written nearly 40 mathematics papers and is the author of the texts "Discrete Dynamical Systems: Theory and Applications", "Discrete Dynamical Modeling", and "Elementary Mathematical Modeling: A Dynamic Approach". He was the Principal Investigator on three different NSF grants, a Teacher Enhancement Institute, a Teacher Leadership Grant, and the Curriculum Development Grant, Hands-on Activities for Algebra , to develop hands-on models for developmental college math courses. He is a writer for the NCTM's Standards 2000. Dr. Sandefur was a program officer at NSF in the Instructional Materials Development Program. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Cornell University Center for Applied Mathematics, the University of Iowa, and the Freudenthal Institute at the University of Utrecht.